Guide to Computer User Support for

Help Desk and Support Specialists 5th

Edition Fred Beisse Solutions Manual
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A Guide to Computer User Support for Help Desk and Support Specialists, Fifth Edition 7-1

Chapter 7
User Support Management

At a Glance

Instructor’s Manual Table of Contents

• Overview

• Chapter Objectives

• Teaching Tips

• Quick Quizzes

• Class Discussion Topics

• Additional Projects

• Additional Resources

• Key Terms
A Guide to Computer User Support for Help Desk and Support Specialists, Fifth Edition 7-2

Lecture Notes

Overview
Chapter 7 introduces students to the perspective of the manager of a help desk support
group. The first half of the chapter covers the ways that managers evaluate staff
performance, justify costs, and hire new staff. The second half of the chapter focuses on
training and certification for support staff.

Chapter Objectives
In this chapter, students will learn about:
• The mission of a support group and the features of a mission statement
• Items in a typical user support budget
• Staffing a help desk
• Support staff training programs
• Evaluations of support staff performance
• Industry certifications for support professionals
• Professional help desk and user support associations
• Ethical principles that guide the professional behavior of support workers

Teaching Tips
Managerial Concerns: Mission, Budgets, Staffing, Training, and
Performance
1. Describe the importance of the managerial role to help desk support staff.

User Support Mission

1. Define the term mission statement and review the example in Figure 7-1.

Teaching Students can generate their own mission statements at the following Web site:
Tip www.nightingale.com/mission_select.aspx.

Budgeting for User Support Services

1. Explain that the help desk budget is a financial plan that translates the goals of the
mission statement into a concrete strategy to meet those goals.

2. Discuss the list of factors that may be considered when developing a help desk budget,
which is shown on page 288.
A Guide to Computer User Support for Help Desk and Support Specialists, Fifth Edition 7-3

3. Review the categories of revenue and expenses shown in Figure 7-2.

Staffing the Help Desk

1. Discuss how managers calculate staffing levels for the help desk. The Erlang unit is
useful in calculating how many workers are required, as are trial and error and personal
experience.

2. Describe the process of creating position descriptions for help desk support staff. Lists
of knowledge, skills, and abilities required by workers help round out the position
descriptions along with the mission statement. Qualifications for a specific position are
defined in terms of the requirements listed on page 292. Note that a manager is unlikely
to find workers who embody every part of the position description and KSA checklist.
Instead, these documents should be considered a wish list.

3. Note that after position descriptions have been created, a selection team prescreens
applications to match the applicants’ skills to the KSA checklist.

4. Describe the interview process. The following tests and types of questions may be
included in this process:
• Knowledge and skills tests
• Traditional interview questions, including directed questions and nondirected
questions
• Behavioral questions
• Scenario questions
• Stress tolerance assessments
• Illegal questions (this type of question should be avoided)

5. Review the role-playing scenario on pages 296–297.

User Support Staff Training

1. Describe the common types of support staff training for new and ongoing workers.
New staff typically receive orientation through training sessions that cover the topics
listed on page 298. Discuss the common training topics for ongoing help desk training,
and explain how managers schedule workers’ time so that they can participate in such
training.

User Support Performance Evaluation and Justification

1. Define the term performance appraisal and explain how these appraisals are carried
out.

2. Explain the use of performance statistics to evaluate help desk operation, using the
examples on page 301.

3. Define the terms wait time and abandonment rate.

A Guide to Computer User Support for Help Desk and Support Specialists, Fifth Edition 7-4

4. Discuss how a user satisfaction survey can be used to measure user satisfaction.

5. Discuss the difference between a cost center operation and a profit center operation.
Explain that a chargeback is a fee charged to another department that uses support
services.

Quick Quiz 1
1. (True/False) Support groups use their mission statement as a yardstick against which to
measure their progress toward their goals.
Answer: True

2. A(n) ____ is a unit of traffic (or a user incident, in the case of support groups) processed
in a given period of time.
Answer: Erlang

3. Which of the following is NOT a tool used during the interview process?
A. directed question
B. knowledge and skills test
C. scenario question
D. position description
Answer: D

4. (True/False) Wait time is a performance measure of the average time it takes to respond
to incidents.
Answer: True

User Support Certification

1. Note that there is an increasing demand for certification of skills in many technology
fields. Several types of certification are available; they are discussed in the following
sections.

Teaching Ask students to discuss any certifications that they currently hold. Ask them to
Tip explain the path they took to obtain the certifications.

Formal Education Certification

1. Explain that many community colleges and vocational schools offer programs that lead
to a certificate or degree. However, this type of degree does not offer any personal
experience.
A Guide to Computer User Support for Help Desk and Support Specialists, Fifth Edition 7-5

Vendor-Specific Certification

1. Review the certification programs offered by hardware and software vendors in Table
7-1.

Industry-Standard Certification

1. Note that an alternative to vendor-specific certification is industry-standard

certification, such as those listed in Table 7-2.

User Support and Help Desk Certification

1. Review the certification programs listed in Table 7-3, which includes programs offered
by the Help Desk Institute (HDI) and Microsoft.

User Support Center Certification Programs

1. Note that some certification programs are offered for organizations rather than for
individuals.

The Benefits of Certification

1. Review the benefits of certification listed on pages 309–310.

Certification Exam Preparation

1. Describe the different ways that certification candidates can prepare for their exams:
• College course curriculum
• Crash courses
• E-learning tutorials
• Self-study courses

2. Explain how certification exams are administered as either traditional tests or computer
adaptive tests.

User Support as a Profession

1. Note that the user support profession is expanding in the United States and overseas.
Statistics are shown in Table 7-4.

Teaching Discuss the current economic climate and its effect on job growth for the user
Tip support profession. What impact do students think this will have?
A Guide to Computer User Support for Help Desk and Support Specialists, Fifth Edition 7-6

2. Describe the functions of a professional association and review the associations listed
in Table 7-5. Note that professional organizations may adopt a code of ethical conduct
(see Figure 7-4 for an example).

Quick Quiz 2
1. ____ is an assessment process to measure and document worker knowledge and skills in
a specialized segment of the information technology field.
Answer: Certification

2. In addition to hardware, operating systems, and troubleshooting skills, ____

certifications cover a variety of specialized skills, such as network administration, Web
design, and project management.
Answer: industry-standard

3. (True/False) Cisco and Novell are examples of vendor-specific certifications.

Answer: True

4. An important activity of a professional association is to adopt a code of ____ to guide

its members’ professional behavior.
Answer: ethical behavior

Class Discussion Topics

1. What suggestions would you have for a manager looking to fill a help desk support
position?

2. Do you think that there are benefits in obtaining multiple types of certification rather
than specializing in one type?

Additional Projects
1. Have students research job listings for help desk support staff online, and then make a
list of the KSAs for two or three positions. How similar or different are they?

2. Ask students to find a certification study course online. How long is the course? What is
the cost? What type(s) of certification does the course prepare attendees for? Students
should provide the answers to these questions and the URL for the course in a Word
document.
A Guide to Computer User Support for Help Desk and Support Specialists, Fifth Edition 7-7

Additional Resources
1. Article on mission statements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_statement

2. Chart to help determine help desk staffing levels:

http://coastaltech.com/hd-staff.htm

3. Microsoft certifications:
www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-overview.aspx

4. Help Desk Institute (HDI) Web site:

www.thinkhdi.com/default.aspx

Key Terms
 Abandonment rate—The percentage of calls in which the user hangs up before support
staff respond.
 Behavioral question—An interview question that gives a job applicant an opportunity
to describe how he or she behaved in a specific work situation.
 Certification—An assessment process to measure and document a professional’s
knowledge and skills in a specialized segment of the information technology field.
 Code of ethical conduct—Principles to guide a worker’s professional behavior; a code
of conduct is often distributed by a professional association for its membership.
 Computer adaptive test—A certification testing method that asks questions that are
graded in difficulty from easy to moderate to difficult, to try to quickly estimate a test
taker’s ability.
 Cost center operation—A user support operation for which the cost of providing
services appears as an expense in an organization’s budget without an offsetting
revenue stream.
 Crash course—An intensive class, sometimes called a boot camp, designed to prepare
participants to take a certification exam in a week or less.
 Directed question—An interview question about a specific job requirement; directed
questions are intended to learn whether an applicant has specific educational or work
experiences.
 E-learning tutorial—Computer-based training (CBT) or Web-based training (WBT)
designed to prepare participants for a certification exam.
 Erlang—A unit of traffic (user incidents, in the case of a support group) processed in a
given period of time; it is used to estimate the number of support staff required to
respond to an expected volume of incidents in a given time period.
 Illegal question—An interview question that is intended to obtain information about an
applicant’s characteristics that are not specifically job related, such as age, ethnicity,
marital status, sexual orientation, religion, and some information about disabilities.
 Knowledge and skills test—A test that measures a job applicant’s knowledge and
problem-solving abilities.
 Mission statement—A list of guiding principles that communicate the goals and
objectives of a support group to its staff, users, and management.
A Guide to Computer User Support for Help Desk and Support Specialists, Fifth Edition 7-8

 Nondirected question—An interview question that is open-ended and gives an

applicant an opportunity to talk in general terms about his or her qualifications for a
position.
 Performance appraisal—The process of evaluating a user support worker according to
established criteria; criteria should be related to the support group’s mission, the
worker’s position description, and the worker’s professional development objectives.
 Performance statistics—Objective data about a user support or help desk operation
often directly related to the user support mission statement.
 Professional association—A formal organization that represents the interests of a
group of professionals and provides services to its membership.
 Profit center operation—A user support operation for which the cost of providing
services is treated as an expense that is offset by revenue generated by the group.
 Scenario question—An interview question that gives a job applicant a specific problem
(or set of problems) representative of the kinds of situations user support staff actually
encounter; scenario questions are used to measure the applicant’s problem-solving skills
and ability to work under pressure.
 Self-study course—Preparatory materials, usually in book format, that readers
complete at their own pace before taking a certification exam.
 Staff training—Training designed to orient new support workers to their jobs, as well
as ongoing training to update the skills and encourage professional growth of
experienced support staff.
 Stress tolerance assessment—An interview environment designed to evaluate how
well a job applicant works under pressure.
 User satisfaction survey—A questionnaire that attempts to measure how satisfied users
are with the support services they have experienced.
 Wait time—The average time it takes a help desk to respond to calls.